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Postcards from Miami -- Shakey's guys

When I met him, Shakey Rodriguez was showing a video to his class at Miami's Dr. Krop High School. Something with wildlife.
"How's your team?" I asked.
He shrugged. "We're 10-0."
(Later, I would ask someone if Shakey's team was the best in the city. "Maybe the whole state," I was told.)
Of all the people I've met here, no one is more intriguing than Rodriguez, the ultra-successful coach who built the basketball machine at Miami Senior. Shakey has a definite mystique here in South Florida, and the legend has only grown with the success of "Shakey's guys" -- Alabama coach Anthony Grant and, of course, Kansas State coach Frank Martin.
I'm not sure who I was expecting -- Don Corleone, maybe -- but the guy I met was open and easy-going, comfortably clad in K-State warm-ups.
I was there to find out what Rodriguez saw in Martin, the former team manager who became Rodriguez's handpicked successor when he left Miami Senior to become the head coach at Florida International.
The simple answer is that Martin showed up one day, a teenager looking for a place to belong, and simply refused to leave.
"There are things that are constants that you saw from the beginning," Rodriguez said. "He was a guy that had a great passion for the game of basketball from the time he was young. He wanted to be a part of the game, he wanted to be a part of our staff. He was very much into the game itself. You could see the passion, the love of the game."
There's more to it than that, of course, but it's a good place to start. We talked about other stuff, including the controversy that cost Martin his job at Miami Senior. ("Nonsense that never should have happened," Rodriguez said.)
Toward the end, the conversation turned to Angel Rodriguez, Shakey's star pupil. Everyone here -- I mean everyone -- raves about Angel, the point guard who will play for Martin next year at K-State.
All coaches gush about their own players, but the things you hear about Rodriguez seem to carry some extra weight. When Krop beat Winter Park earlier this year, people said Rodriguez outplayed Duke commit Austin Rivers, the top player in the 2011 class according to Rivals. (Both players scored 19 points.)
"Angel's probably the best guard I've ever coached in my career," Rodriguez said, "and I've coached some damn good ones."